Хелен Браун: Cleo

We’d spent long enough in each other’s company for her to know I had her interests at heart. We’d been through so much together and found a kind of peace, not only with each other, but within ourselves. Together we discovered the well-kept secret that, give or take a few inconveniences, old cats have more fun.

Cleo and I decided to become quirky about our eating habits. I was afflicted with an obsession for chocolate, dark chocolate to be precise, preferably seventy percent cocoa, made in Switzerland and wrapped in something shiny involving photos of mountains. Try as I might to divert my addiction to Italian writing paper or thousand-thread-count sheets, I could find nothing more mesmerizing than chocolate. Cleo underwent an even more powerful food fixation. The word “no” had never been of particular interest to our cat. She now obliterated it from her understanding of human vocabulary. In her mature years, however, she learnt exactly what the words “Chicken Man” meant.

Whenever anyone announced they were off to Chicken Man (to buy a rotisserie takeaway bird from the cheerful Asian man’s shop round the corner), Cleo trotted behind them and waited eagerly at the door until they returned with the mouth-watering parcel.

Cleo was circumspect about most food, though on the whole she preferred it murdered or stolen. Chicken Man was in a different league. One whiff of the freshly roasted flesh drove her to salivating insanity. Anyone in charge of an unguarded plate of chicken was at risk. Loyalties and past affections were forgotten as she embarked on chicken jihad.

We developed a routine of shutting her out of the room so we could have first choice of the meat.

“Poor Cleo!” Katharine would say, as an elegant black paw appeared under the door.

There was no “poor” about it. If the door wasn’t closed properly, the paw slid down the side and pushed it open. Bones and paper napkins would fly through the air, plates clattered to the floor. It was chicken season for young and old.

Our food fixations were equally unattractive to outsiders. The only difference was, Cleo’s didn’t make her any fatter. In fact, she appeared to be shrinking. Her chest bones jutted out, the angles of her skull became even sharper and more prominent. With fur draped over her skeletal form, she resembled an amateur attempt at taxidermy.

That’s not saying we didn’t enjoy moments of friskiness. If the curtains were pulled tight enough and there was no evidence of human life within a five-hundred-meter radius, a determined anthropologist might still have caught a glimpse of me boogieing alone to the strains of Marvin Gaye.

Likewise, after a shower of rain, Cleo shimmied like a kitten up a tree trunk—until halfway up old age got the better of her and she slid unceremoniously back down.

Cleo’s legs, once so tapered and streamlined, became slightly stumpy with lumps where (if she was human) knees and ankles would be. She never grumbled, though. I trudged off to the gym and lifted weights to combat back and neck pain that would never have developed if, like Cleo, I’d spent my life on all fours. The old person’s fear of falling over would never have to be considered if we’d stayed firmly planted to the ground on four feet. Once again, our cat was proving herself a higher-level species.

While our bodies may have given the appearance of growing old, inside Cleo and I were growing up and getting stroppy. In the supermarket checkout line, people always used to recognize me as a pushover. Anyone from toddlers to old men knew they could sneak in front of me without consequences. But the new, stroppy me stood my ground when queue jumpers tried to nudge in front of me. I was even capable of an indignant “Excuse me !” I filled out complaint forms without hesitation and stopped thinking twice about hanging up on telephone marketers calling from Mumbai.

Cleo surpassed me by taking uppity to an art form. When our sight-impaired friend Penny visited with her guide dog Mishka, I placed two bowls of water on the floor—a small one for Cleo and a large one for Mishka. Cleo eyeballed the yellow labrador and claimed the large bowl for herself. Mishka shrunk to half her giant size and retreated to the small bowl.

Penny laughed and accepted my apologies for our pet’s ungracious behavior. I explained that, as a kitten, Cleo had done the same thing to Rata. Nodding amiably, Penny sat on the floor. Mishka parked her rear end affectionately on her owner’s lap. They made a charming vignette, a picture of owner and devoted dog. The image was too much for Cleo. She fixed Mishka with a glower that was so withering the poor animal skulked away into a corner and allowed Cleo to take over prime position on Penny’s lap.

“And what happened to poor little Cleo?” Rosie asked when she phoned out of the blue one day.

“Oh, she’s fine.”

“In a better place,” she sighed. “I always say there are sardines every day in Pussy Heaven.”

“No, Rosie. I mean fine fine.”

“She’s still alive ! You’re joking! How old is she now?”

I was getting sick and tired of people asking us impertinent questions about age. “Twenty-three.”

“But that’s, let me see…something like one hundred and sixty-one in human years. Are you sure it’s the same cat?”

“Absolutely.”

“How did you do it? What have you been feeding her? What medication is she on?”

“Nothing special. How are Scruffy, Ruffy, Beethoven and Sibelius?”

An awkward silence. “Well, Scruffy disappeared, Beethoven had kidney failure. Sibelius and Ruffy went to cat heaven ten years ago. I always made sure they had the best of everything, not like your poor little Cleo. I’m surprised you remember their names. You never were a cat person, were you?”

“But I must be!” I replied. “I couldn’t not be. Cleo wouldn’t have stayed with us this long if I wasn’t. Besides, we’re both getting so old Cleo and I are practically the same person. No, dammit, Rosie. You’re wrong. I AM a cat person !”

Not long after, Philip and I were at a restaurant celebrating our fourteenth wedding anniversary.

“I’ll never forget that night you took us to the pizza restaurant and you beat Rob at that game filling in the squares.”

“It was snakes and ladders, wasn’t it?” he said, sipping his champagne.

“It was filling in squares. You nearly blew it that night. Not letting a boy win. I was going to send you packing.”

“Were you?” he replied with a twinkle. “I’ll always remember Cleo bouncing around the house like she owned the place.”

“She did own it. Not many people would have taken us on the way you did, you know”, I said, changing the subject. “A solo mum eight years older with two kids.”

Rob had once said having Philip in our lives was like winning Lotto. I’d been in awe of Philip’s love and commitment to all three of our children, never once making a distinction between Katharine, his biological daughter, and the other two. Their love for him in return was equally deep and seamless. I was fortunate to have spent so many years with such a rare, open-hearted man.

“Not work again, is it?” I said as he took his bleeping mobile phone from his pocket.

“It’s Kath,” he replied, his face grave as he listened to her distraught staccato.

“We’d better go. Cleo’s having some sort of fit.”

Tough Vet, Soft Vet

Chicken Man each day keeps the vet away.

By the time we arrived back home Cleo was her normal self again.

“It was so scary!” said Katharine, still flushed with shock. “She made a horrible growl, then she fell over and twitched. Her whole body seized up. She must’ve been in so much pain.”